Our new GIRL

Sorry.. it's been quite sometime since I last posted.  I guess I just needed to have some time to absorb and move on from the loss of our two dogs.
I've missed quite a bit, I'll be posting pics from Easter and Sierra at gymnastics in the next couple days just to try and get a little caught up.

But for tonight, let me start off with the fact that it was a very nice quiet, relaxed day.  I woke up this morning, the morning of the day of Pete and my 10th anniversary with the Alice in Wonderland Mad Hatter song "Un-Birthday" in my head, only the words were something to the tune of "Have a very merry 10th Anniversary to me, to me", it was a little annoying but I had to laugh at the sentiment I was apparently feeling for the day.
After I dropped Sierra at school, I spent the morning doing a little bit of retail therapy, always fun, but ofcourse I also saw more that I wanted to get, but am currently low on funds, so I have my list for after next paycheck purchases.
I came home and vegged out on the couch with Pete, (he was relaxing by playing some sort of war game on the x-box360 with his brother Dale, who was playing on-line with him), tried to take a small nap, but Ivan's love of MOM kept him constantly climbing on/bumping into or cuddling next to me.  I finally gave up and went to the bedroom where I promptly turned on the laptop and watched the latest episode of BONES.  At some point Pete came in and promptly fell asleep, poor guy worked all night, but made it to about 1:35ish before zonking. 
I then ran to get the kids and drop them at my friends house, afterwich I zoomed back to the house and woke Pete up at 3:30 so that we could get ready to go get our new family member. 

We got another blue Weimaraner, but this time it's a beautiful baby girl.  We got Hermes when he was 9 weeks, and our little girl is only 5 weeks, what a difference.  We tossed a few names around and the one we both agreed on was Mike.  All of the greek/olympian god names were a bit to long or just didn't fit.  So we started to think about German names since Weims are German.  Ofcourse Pete offered up the name Duchess, (The name of the dog, ARCHER's code name was based on).  I promptly laughed but nixed it because everytime I heard it, it reminded me of the Cat from Aristocats.  Then since we were talking about names from television, the movie Eurotrip came to mind, and we agreed on Mike - pronounced Mee-kah.
Here are the pics I took of her when we got back to the house, enjoy.

In Memoriam

Yesterday, Maeze our dog of about 12 yrs, passed on.  It was a said day for all of us especially Pete as he's had Maeze before we had ever even met.  She lived a long full life but at the end she was ready for all the pain to go away. I would put a picture of her up, but I don't have access to one on this computer.

As if that wasn't bad enough.  The puppy we adopted in October had to be put to sleep this afternoon.
11 days ago we noticed that his nose was swelling slightly, over the course of the next few days his nose swelled even more.  We finally got him an appointment at the vet for yesterday, they looked at him and said "Wow, we've never seen anything like that before."  They gave him a shot of steroids and a shot of antibiotics and took some blood to run labs to find out what was going on.  He ate some food that afternoon, and drank some water.  But then his health continued to worsen during the night.  He started coughing, and drooling excessively, as well as other equally worrisome symptoms.  We tried to administer the antibiotics that we had been instructed to give him, but his mouth was so swollen you couldn't shove anything down it, let alone a pill, and he had stopped eating/drinking, so we couldn't put it in there.  We waited until 11am, when we still hadn't heard from the vet about the lab results we called.  We were told that the lab results showed, he was anemic, and had a bone marrow deficiancy and that his kidneys were starting to shut down, on top of the infection that was raging through his body.  We took him back to the vet today around 11:30, where after consulting an internal medicine dr.  the vet told us the sad news.  Hermies had been born with bad kidneys, as he grew, they were shutting down.  It had only been a matter of time, we couldn't have known, and there was nothing we could have done if we had known.  He had literally started dying the day he'd been born.

The vet said that over time his kidneys had started failing little by little as Hermies grew, add to that his anemia and bone marrow deficiency.  Supposedly the kidney failure trigured a serious of events, that began with the bones in Hermes jaw basically being leeched of calcium making his jaws brittle.  His jaw had actually broken which had begun the swelling and then ultimately ended in infection.  Typically the cell counts in the marrow would have begun to fight the infection but because of his anemia and marrow deficiancy his body wasn't fighting at all.

It's been a hard two days, and I know that some people are coming to Sierra's birthday party on Saturday.  If you read this and are coming, I would appreciate it if Hermes was not mentioned as I'm not sure how I'll be feeling and would rather not chance crying at Sierra's birthday party.

Sierra and Ivan are dealing with the loss of both Maeze and Hermes better than I had thought they would, which is a relief.  Though they keep asking me when we'll get another dog.  All I can say to them is when the time is right.  Right now, I can barely make it 15 minutes without seeing something or thinking something that just seems to trigger the water works all over again.

I can say, that when I'm emotionally ready I would love to adopt another weimaraner.  When we are ready and can afford to adopt another weimaraner puppy, I'm hoping that it's another blue one, who has a lovers spirit.

Rain, Rain go away!!

Most people who know me, know how much I love the rain!  I love the smell, the sound, cloud cover, the way it seems to wash everything clean, the cool crispness in the air when there is a break in the rain.  I love it all, I'd have been a very good Seattle person!

However, when the rain comes and comes and comes, it is not a good thing cause the dear husband never got around to fixing the roof.  Now for the 2nd time, my bedroom wall paint is filling with large fist sized water bubbles.  So we get to go pop them to drain the water, and out ofcourse comes the milky mixture of rain water and plaster.  When it gets wet enough sometimes the paint just peels off like a bad wallpaper.  I'm SOOOoooo NOT happy.  Then ofcourse I slept with Sierra in her bed last night because, the vent above mine decided to have a quadruple leak.  Somehow, somewhere the water is getting inside the vent and draining down right on top of the middle and my side of the bed, leaving only Pete's side uncovered by towels and bowls.  And god love the man, but he wasn't going to be the gentleman and give up his space to sleep on the couch.

I'm venting of course, but it just ticks me off, because I've already scraped, spackled and re-painted the bedroom once, because Pete wasn't doing it, I got tired of looking at it after a few months.  Plus Pete bought everything he needed to fix the roof back in Aug/Sept and it's just been sitting in the shed ever since.  Just venting, venting, venting.  I know he's been busy and that friends/family were supposed to come help him do it, and that never happened.  It just sucks soo much.  I'm now glad I splurged and bought the bottle of wine to go with dinner tonight, because I've thrown that sucker in the freezer to get chilled and I'm popping it open early.

I'll get a nice glass, and start a new puzzle, I'm NOT going to think about the damage to my walls, roof, bedding, or the lack of sleeping in the comfort of my own bed.  The forcast says it'll be rainy all week long.  So bring on the wine, and I'll just breathe.

First Post of the New Year

I hope everyone's New Year celebration was fun!!  We enjoyed time spent down at my brothers house.  It was a nice night spent with family and friends.  Ofcourse I managed to fall asleep on the couch around 11 and woke up during the countdown, lol!

We're in the second day of BACK to SCHOOL for Sierra, and getting back into the grove of things, seems to me to get harder and harder to do with each passing year, (as though I've been doing it for more than 2yrs, right!)
I noticed during our 2-week winter break that no matter if I went to bed at midnight or at 9pm I still don't want to get up before 9am in the morning.  Setting the alarm for 7am at the latest to get Sierra to school by 8am, is quite the trial for me right now. 
In addition to working on correcting my sleep schedule, I also returned to the gym today (First time in 3-weeks).  Which is far better than the 2-month hiatus I took off in 2008.  Even with the shorter hiatus period I still end up feeling faint halfway through class, something that happened after my preious yrs break too!
In 2008 I was going to the gym 5 days a week, then I took a 2 month break over the holidays returning in January.  The first class back I have to leave halfway through and cool down in the locker-room otherwise I'd have passed out.  SO-problem assessed, fix - start eating breakfast in the mornings (something I never used to do unless it was the weekend).  SO knowing that I would go back to the gym this morning I ate a small breakfast, but apparently my iron was still too low, because I'm having the same problem even with eating something before hand now.  I guess I'll start trying to take iron supplements again.  Let's see if I can do it this time without gagging!
I'm not sure why, today of all days I decided to start spring cleaning.  The other day I looked at the bookcase and thought I should go through it and get rid of some of the books, I've no intention to read.  You'd think I'd say I should get rid of the books that I have read too!  But unfortunately I find I enjoy most of the books I read and then I think I need to keep them, so that I can read them again in the future.  Some of which I do read over again, and again.  However, Pete said that he was going to get me an e-book reader pretty soon.  I already have a lot (I mean A LOT) of e-books.  That I read off my laptop or his computer.  I know that probably about 75% of what is occupying my bookshelves, I also have in e-reader format.  So now the question is, do I sell the hardbacks that I've been collecting of my Fave authors and simply keep them on e-reader, or do I hold on to the tangible evidence of the written word? And allow them to continue to take up space on the bookshelves.  I've firmly decided in my mind to "lose" all the books including hardbacks of my UN-fave authors, and simply make sure I have the book in e-reader before letting them go.  But books to me are very important.  My brother calls me insane because my sister-n-law can loan me a 400+ page book on Saturday morning and I'll give it back to her on Sunday morning, completely read.  I feel that reading - no matter the author - is much like watching a movie play out inside my head.  I get so drawn into them sometimes (if its super good) that Pete will physically wrestle books out of my hand and hide them from me, so that I'll stop reading, and make dinner, lol!
So at any rate I'm spring cleaning and I made myself a list of 25 things to do today, before Pete gets home tomorrow.  Most of which involve cleaning of some kind.  I've only done 12 things on my list and this is the first time I've sat down today (5:30pm).  Between dropping Sierra off at school, the gym, paying bill (physically going to Kohl's), coming home to clean (which inevitably turns into organizing as well (can I never do things the simple way), picking Sierra up from school, coming home to clean some more, playing phone tag with family and friends and now finally sitting down to write this (which I started to write in my head while cleaning I might add), I can admit that I'm beat.  I've been wanting to sit down for I don't know how long, but I didn't, cause I had that feeling today that if I sat down, the rest of my list would be done for, cause it wouldn't be getting done.  I admit I was right, now that I've sat, I really don't think I'll be doing anything other than making dinner tonight.

AND OFCOURSE I just got a call from Pete, and guess what he's on his way home! Half of me says YEA! The other half says CRAP!  I've only gotten around half of the things done, that I wanted before he came home, since for some reason I rarely get the cleaning bug when he's home, I highly doubt much else will be getting done.  I know I'm not going to want to even move tomorrow after body works this morning.  OH WELL!  Light bulb moment - I have nothing defrosted for dinner, won't he be thrilled with Ramon soup. OMG!

Today, I believe, especially with the way I feel right now, would be a could time to share a quote I found today while going through my bookcase.

"We have hints that there is a way of life vastly richer and deeper than all this hurried existance, a life of unhurried serenity and peace and power.  If only we could slip over into that center!"
Thomas Kelly circa 1941

2009 Newsletter

I stress to only read this when you have the time, because I know it will be long!

Normally I send out a newsletter, ofcourse anyone who knows me will be saying ha, ha, ha.  Since for the past two years I've managed to procrastinate long enough that I've e-mailed out newsletters.  Though I was rather proud of myself this year.  With plan intact I set the tree up the day after Thanksgiving, thinking it would then give me plenty of time to take the family photo and have them printed out to send out with the newsletter.  Well for once I got the picture taken and printed out but had written nothing newsletterish.  So I found two boxes of "Picture" christmas cards in the stored christmas items and sent those out.  Anyone who was supposed to get one and didn't please accept my apology now, I sent out 40 cards this year and luckily only two have been returned with wrong addresses.  So, so sorry Glenn and Elizabeth, I either have an old address or wrote the address down wrong when transferring it to my address book.

I'm hoping everyones Christmas was filled with holiday cheer!  And I wish you a happy new year.

On to Us, way out west, here in Warm, Sunny Arizona

IVAN

What can I say about our little man.

Ivan has been doing very well.  Thankfully he hasn't had any accidents this year, but he'll forever have a scar on his noggin from the mag-lite incident of 2008.  Oh well, I say, now, he looks even more like his dad, as they both have scars on their heads, lol!

He's been working with his letters.  Though the curriculum of pre-school work I had told myself I was going to follow fell by the wayside.  He knows 13 of the 26 letters of the alphabet on sight, can spell his name and also knows his colors, and can count to 10.

He still plays with his action heroes, the most popular now being Star Wars and Tranformers, though he loves to play the X-Box360 lego games and super hero games.  Sometimes it can be a trial getting him off, but he always asks if he can play them first and normally doesn't throw a huge fit when told he has to practice his letters first.

He turned 4 in August and had a blast at his birthday party.  At the beginning of the year Pete and I agreed that the kids parties would not be the huge to-dos that the past years have been and that we would keep them small and simple in 2009.  So Sierra's was -no family, and only 2 friends for a small sleepover (i'll tell that story in her section).  So needless to say it was fairly quiet.  Then here comes Ivan's party.  I didn't save up any money for decorations/food etc. that a large party calls for, cause it was supposed to be us, and our Tucson family/friends.  Then 2 days before the party when Pete is away at camp he calls and asks me how much it costs to rent a bouncy castle??  Because he invited a few people from work to bring their kids over.

So Ivan's small party turned into a party of about 25.  So in two days I rented a bouncy castle (last one available) placed an order for 7 papa murphy's (YUMMY) pizza's, cleaned the house, present shopped and managed to make an erupting volcano cake with the help of my wonderful business partner Crystalle.

The party was a success, which everyone enjoyed and even though it was hectic to put together, I was able to sit down, and visit with our guests for most of the time.  Ivan couldn't have been happier!

For the most part the rest of the year has just been going through the motions for him as he's too young to sign up for any sports and hasn't started school yet.  He spends a lot of time playing with his friend Evan, has the occasional play date with the Sylvestre boys and plays with his sister.

Both of whom spend amazing amounts of time down in the basement playing with their legos!

SIERRA

Wow, Sierra!!

Where do I even begin.  At the beginning of 2009 she graduated kindergarten at Ironwood.  She recieved awards and performed in their end of year performance.  Saying so long to friends with the typical I can't wait to see you in 1st grade.  Which would'nt have been bad, Casa Grande not decided to redraw their lines to take into account all the new housing developements that had been built.  Unfortunately we were one the unlucky who were told that Sierra would be going to a different school come August.  Having gotten used to Ironwood and liking the small size, location, staff and kids that went there.  I put Sierra on the waiting list for open enrollment.  Something I was told was that we would not know if she got into Ironwood until 2 weeks after school started again.  This seemed to me a bit silly.  I didn't want Sierra to start at one school get used to it then two weeks later change.  But, alas, I'm just a mother and have no say over what the rules of the school district are.  SO Sierra enjoyed her last day of school with smiles and tears and promises of staying in touch...no matter what!

Mackenzie, Faith, Sierra, Celeste, and Michaela

We go through summer with the cancellation of Gymnastics, - not by our choice - Coach Robert packing up shop and taking off with $80 of tuition that was never refunded.  Having an amazing vacation with Grandma and Grandpa at Disney World in FLORIDA!!!  Thank you so much Grandma/Grandpa!

Coming home to hot weather minus the humidity, whew!

Pete leaves on another camp and ofcourse while he's gone we have meet the teacher at the new school.  From all outward appearances the new school looks small, and well kept.  However once inside the layout of walking directly into the libraby which all classroom doors open into, and then having to walk through the inner classroom to get to the outer classroom (think a ring within a ring), only to find that your childs classroom is crammed full without even a single inch of wall space available, and that while their is a door to close off the inner room from the outer room their are open doorways with no doors leading into seperate classrooms on either side.

The entire time I'm thinking, "Seriously, are you sh#$ing me??"  Do you know how to say ghetto??

Once home, I immediately call Pete, and ofcourse he's out of cell range, so I leave him a message about how ghetto the school was and that I thought he would agree with me when I say we are not going to allow our child to go there.  After talking with several people, and after 2 days finally getting a hold of Pete the day before school starts.  We discuss our options of

1.  Waiting to hear from Ironwood

2.  Seeing if there were any open slots at the new Charter School

and 3.  Home schooling (Last option since we both like our daughter alive)

On Monday, the supposed first day of school, I manage to get a hold of Legacy (charter) and they still have spots available in 1st grade.  I run over and register her, and luckily, their school year didnt start until the next week due to construction delays at their temporary facility.  SO Sierra didn't miss a dau of school, and I'll have no problem enrolling Ivan this coming year, since Sierra is already enrolled.

The funny ha ha thing about all this, was the fact that no more than 30 minutes after registering her at Legacy, Ironwood calls and tells me they have an opening for her.

 

Sierra loves her new teacher and likes the new school but she says it's boring, as they are currently at a temporary facility there is no cafeteria or large playground.  The small play area they have must be shared by all grades k-6 so they all have specific days/times that they can use the playground.  So most of her days are spent in her classroom.  Her class size is 20 and there are only 4 girls, Sierra included.  So I understand when she says it's boring.  She's doing very well academically and even made the honor roll this past semester.  She enjoys the extras they offer too, like music class and art masterpiece.

She's made new friends but has managed to keep in touch with Faith from Ironwood too.

Since gymnastics went kaput Sierra decided to try her legs at Soccer.  She managed to get on the same team as her friend Faith, who's dad was the coach, and then since we knew Faith's parents, Faith's dad asked Pete to be co-coach.  Pete ended up being a helpful practice coach which enabled him to spend more time with Sierra, it was nice but hard on him as his schedule changed to midnights instead of days.

She enjoyed soccer but missed gymnastics so after soccer ended in November Pete and I broke down and signed her up for Gymnastics at Desert Lights.  So every Saturday Sierra, Ivan and I drive the 45 minutes north to Chandler so that Sierra can do her gymnastics again.  We all must admit that this Gym is soooo much better.  But then again, being the top club in Arizona, it better be nice.

There are other BP's kids who go there and we have some friends that though not BP go there as well.  One other BP wife and myself have discussed the possibility of carpooling which more than likely will start this month, to save on that pesky gas bill!

MYSELF AND PETE

I'd like to say that not a whole lot has changed,  but a few good things have happened this year.

Pete came off bikes and works the midnight shift which inturn pays a little more cause of night time differential.  The only other nice thing about that being Pete isn't as likely to get hurt.  Typically he gets home, goes to sleep and is up in time for a late dinner.  We see a lot less of him, but try to hang out more and do things on his days off.  He's taken a few weeks here and there to play dirtbike instructor at work, which he really enjoys doing.  He can't wait for me to get of my bum and make him his little crash video.  He enjoys wearing a helmet cam and taking video of the training, capturing all the crashes and what not to do moments.

We work on taking one day at a time, and going from there.  In October we had a blast at Halloween and thankfully I did not over do it this year.  After getting wasted for the first time at 28 last year I was more than certain it was not something I wanted to repeat.  I do not see how waking up the morning after with a hangover appeals to anyone.

I myself am still currently working as a Wilton Instructor though it looks as though that may change this coming year depending on Pete's job.  My friend Crystalle and I finally managed to find the commercial facillity we needed and are now fully licensed and operational.  Everything Cake is open for business.  We did a festival in August and got rave reviews.  We've decided not to advertise until after the new year, but even without advertising we have 4 orders for 2010 and have done 4 orders since Oct.  We're proud and excited, we took the final step and opened out business account 2 weeks ago with the deposit from our second wedding order.

http://www.cgcakeladies.com/
Health wise everyone seems to be good though I've been visiting a chiropractor 3 times a week for the past month.  I was originally told to visit one due to a severely mis-alligned rib, that I noticed during a morning workout at the gym, (in one of those oh my god that hurts I can't possibly do another crunch moments).  During the consultation I was told that since it's not causing any pain and it's a floating rib not to worry about it.  But we're working on my back/shoulder/neck and wrist pain.  All of which is getting better aside from the wrist for which I have recently taken to wearing a brace.  I also need to make an appt. to get all 4 of my wisdom teeth removed, oh joy, so not looking forward to that, but I'm afraid I can put it off no longer.

We also got a new addition to our family this year.  In the beginning of October we brought home a new puppy.  He's a Weimaraner, we purchased him from a local woman whom I'd met through my friend Crystalle.  He was 9 weeks old when we got him, and the original owner was trying to think of German names for him, because she'd always named her Weims german names.  She had been calling him Adolf.

I'm sorry to say that I was not going to call my dog Adolf, so I told Pete we were going to have to come up with something else.  So on the car ride home with the puppy sitting in Pete's lap, Pete named him German, pronounced "Herman".  That names progressed to Hermie and then within a day had conlcuded at Hermes.  So what started out german ended up Olympian as Hermes was Zeus's son (the messenger of the gods).

The breed is supposed to be super smart, and while he seems to learn somethings very quickly, he still hasn't been able to pick up the whole peeing outside "everytime" thing, and continually has "duh" moments.  Pete has been continually saying that we may have gotten the super smart retard dog.  Any way you look at it, I really hope he learns the things he needs to learn quickly because I could not have ever imagined that any dog short of a st. bernard could hold so much liquid in their bladder.

He's much bigger now at almost 5months old.  We were told that he should get to be about 80-90lbs.  Which was one of the reasons I chose him over his brother who was supposed to be around 120lbs.  Hermes was the "lover" out of the two which I thought would be better for the kids, and they do, do very well together.  Though I have a feeling that I'm going to end up having an 80lb. lap dog. LOL!

Our actual Christmas was very nice, DJ came up from Tucson and we had a typical Christmas morning.  Stockings, presents - yay, lego christmas - afterwich the 3 adults spent much time putting together many lego sets.  We took a break for our Ham Dinner, and went to the theatre to see Sherlock Holmes.  After that we came back and continued to build more lego sets.

The kids loved it and we had a good time too!

We're looking forward to the new year and hoping that it brings nice things to us and to all of you!